I am delighted to report that I will have a quilt in this year’s Dinner@8 exhibit, Reflections, which will debut at International Quilt Festival, Houston, in October 2014. I’m honored and humbled to be in such company as the other artists included, many of whom I know and am happy to call friend.

Eli, Cross Country 2014
(c) SarahAnnSmith.com

This year’s challenge was to make a 24″ wide by 60″ long art quilt to the theme of Reflections.  Curators Jamie Fingal and Leslie Tucker Jenison wrote:

“A mirror image. A response to a thought or word. A memory. What glints back at us as we gaze upon the water. The throwing back by a body or surface of light, heat, or sound without absorbing it.  What will your reflection reveal about you?“

For more information, visit their website, here.

For once in my life, I decided not to be literal.  Instead I thought about our sons.  Four years ago, for one of these exhibits, I made a portrait of Joshua playing his guitar.  Now, at the same age, I wanted to portray Eli, who is an honor student and star athlete.  Though his “first” sport is wrestling, it doesn’t really play well with a long and narrow format!  BUT, running does.  So I chose cross country season!

For my entry, I wrote something along these lines:  When I reflect on how fast time has passed by, I am nearly paralyzed.  Like me, Eli prefers to “Do,” not ponder.   At sixteen, he is literally and figuratively running headlong into his future.

For this piece I dyed the red fabrics (same batch as those used for the amaryllis quilt–clever how I managed that one, eh?) and some of the ground and foliage fabrics.  The remainder are commercial batiks.  As usual, I have quilted it very closely.  I hope to share more details with you on that.  For now, here’s a detail photo.

Detail, Eli, Cross Country 2013.
(C) 2014 SarahAnnSmith.com

The Living Colour Textiles exhibit (you can see it online here and blogposts here), including my Amaryllis quilt, is going on tour–wish I could go with it!  And good news for us in the US, it and the exhibit will be at AQS Grand Rapids s next year, 2015.  I, alas, won’t make it, so if you get to the exhibit, I hope you enjoy it!

Amaryllis by Sarah Ann Smith (C) 2014. See the Living Colour Exhibit at http://livingcolourtextiles.com/

Here’s where it is going:

• QuiltWest, Craft & Quilt Fair: 21-25 May 2014 with curator floor talks at 1.30pm Wednesday-Friday (inclusive)
• Sydney Quilt Show, Craft & Quilt Fair: 9-13 July 2014
• Bunker Cartoon Gallery, Coffs Harbour, NSW:  8 August (opening 6pm) – 13 September 2014
• Brisbane Craft & Quilt Fair: 8-12 October 2014
• South Australia Festival of Quilts: 13-16 November 2014
• Supported by BrotherGrenfell Art Gallery, Grenfell, NSW: 22 November-20 December 2014
• Quilt Symposium Manawatu, Palmerston North, New Zealand: 15-21 January 2015
• Northart Gallery, Auckland, New Zealand: Wednesday 28 January (opening 6pm) – 11 February 2015
• Gosford Regional Gallery, Gosford: 21 March (opening 2pm) -22 April 2015
• AQS Quilt Week Grand Rapids, Michigan: 12-15 August 2015

Thanks to  Brother International Australia for generously supporting Living Colour!

You can order the catalog directly from Brenda (good if you live in Australia) or Blurb (good if you live in the US or Canada or not-Oz), a lovely small book (about 6 or 7 inches square) with a page for each of the 32 works that includes a full photo and information about the quilt/quilter.  Photography is great, layout is great.  Price in the US is a modest US $17.25 plus shipping!

At long last I can share!   I still can’t believe that I am amongst those juried in to the Living Colour Textiles exhibit curated by Australian Brenda Gael Smith.

Amaryllis by Sarah Ann Smith (C) 2014. See the Living Colour Exhibit at http://livingcolourtextiles.com/

To see the full exhibit, click on the link in the caption.

I knew I wanted to do something big and bold.  At first I wanted to do a lily, but when I began working on this piece it was mid-winter—not the ideal time of year to go out in Maine and snap pictures of lilies.  Then I realized I had the perfect image right in our own dining room:  an amaryllis.  So I waited patiently for the blossoms to open, took a ga-zillion phiotos, then selected the right ones.

I dyed the red fabric as well as the green/yellow in the centers (and used commercial batiks and my hand-dyes in the background).  I thread-sketched the amaryllis onto batting and backing, then cut away the batting/backing underneath the background, added a second layer of batting (Matilda’s Own Wool-Poly, and thrilled that this wonderful Aussie batting gets to visit “home”), quilted the background densely and around the petals and stamens.   Finished size pieces in the exhibit is 40 x 100 cm, or about 16 x 39 1/2 inches.

Here is a detail:

Amaryllis, detail, by Sarah Ann Smith (C) 2014. See the Living Colour Exhibit at http://livingcolourtextiles.com/

Brenda has a full listing of where the quilts will be on display on the website.  You can also buy an exhibit catalog (published by Blurb) directly from Brenda or, more conveniently for those of us in the US, directly from Blurb.  I’ll add that link here, but at the moment I gotta run!  Spring break has arrived and we are heading out the door to take Eli on his first college visits!  Back soon!

Wow… this is fun:  I am shipping out FOUR quilts to various shows and exhibits today!   The first one to go on display is Conversations 1, at the big AQS show in Paducah!  Then two are going off to be in the Traditional Treasures special exhibit for the International Quilt Festivals in Chicago and (in fall) Houston, and then the pug-love is headed off to a round of exhibits with Mary Wilson Kerr’s Dare to Dance exhibit!

Conversations 1 is going to Paducah!

Next on the exhibit trail is Mr. Wiggles Does the Circle Dance.  This portrait of Pigwidgeon’s joy when getting his supper is in Mary Wilson Kerr’s soon-to-be-available book and exhibit “Dare to Dance:  An Artist’s Interpretation of Joy.”  You can read more about the exhibit and where it is going here.  This quilt is going to log a LOT of miles, starting in West Virginia, heading to MANY Sew Expo’s, MANY Mancuso shows and will return home after (get this!) two and half years on the road!   Wave hullo to our beloved pug when you see him!

Mr. Wiggles Does the Circle Dance is going on the road! If you look closely (at least in person) you can see below the bowl that I’m asking him “Are you hungry?” That questions sets off the dance which begins with three (always three, only three) counter-clockwise (same direction always) circles. He then runs behind your legs and bumps you in the direction of the closet which holds the kibble!

Then, to my utter astonishment and complete delight, I have TWO quilts that made it into a **traditional** exhibit at International Quilt Festival, the Traditional Treasures that will debut in Chicago in June and return again in Houston.  This is the first time I’ve had traditional quilts juried in to a major national show, and I am elated!

This may be one of my favorite quilts. It is inspired by a beer carton (for our grocery challenge, see blogposts here and here). I revised the harbor to be Camden, Maine, and the schooner to be the Louis B French. The miniature storm at sea is mostly from a John Flynn quilt kit, with the small square in a square finishing at (EEEK) 1 1/8″. At least when I pieced them accurately! Finished size is 20 1/2″ square.  This quilt and the next one will also (yippeee!) be included in Lark’s forthcoming 500 Traditional Quilts book!

And my Hawaiian inspired quilt, Nourish the Body, Nourish the Soul, will also be in IQF’s Traditional Treasures.  There are apparently only 25 quilts in this exhibit, so I am totally gobsmacked and humbled to have two quilts included.  Nourish is 64 inches square, is available as a pattern, and is the basis of my Hawaiian Applique by Machine class:

Nourish the Body, Nourish the Soul, by Sarah Ann Smith. The blocks are either food (taro, pineapple or breadfruit) or things that are beautiful: the plumeria with its heavenly scent and the bird of paradise.

Have lots of things to share, but am so busy I don’t have much time to blog!  Will try to post again in a couple of days!

Just a quickie catch-up post!   I’ll have some great news to share in a couple of weeks about what has been keeping me busier than my usual busy.   But I’ve also managed to squeeze in a few other things.  First in date order is two online classes with the delightful, talented, and superlative teacher Val Webb (website here).   This winter I had planned to relax and take two of her classes which overlap by about a month.  Despite the fact that you can really do a LOT of work (and LEARN a LOT), I decided to take both.  First one is Drawing Dogs and Cats, second one is Fairies (or as I prefer, Faeries) in Nature.

My Luna-Boy faerie in gouache, about 9 x 6 inches.

In Val’s classes, you learn not only about drawing, but also painting, as well as various media and techniques.  The lesson above is for small children as fairies, with wings, and gouache (which I have never used).  There are some technical issues; basically, I need practice with the medium!   But overall I am quite pleased with my Luna-boy.  In the next photo, we worked with graphite to sketch a dog.  His right eye is a bit off (thank you for the feedback, Val! I knew something was off but couldn’t spot it until you helped), but I’m fairly happy with this one, as well.  I attribute all good stuff with these two to the quality of Val’s teaching!

Sweet doggie, in graphite pencil.

This week is also number 2 son’s 16th birthday.  How the child can be 16, weigh more than me (wooohooo! finally!), etc., defies comprehension.  Clearly the calendar lies.  Eli’s request for birthday dinner:  my waffles and Joshua’s parmesan fried chicken, an exact repeat of what Joshua had in early November.  As it was the beginning of the wrestling season, Eli couldn’t pig out.  This time he could and did <<grin>>!

We will NOT think about the calories involved in waffles and fried chicken.

Thanks to de facto DIL Ashley for taking pics as I brought in the birthday cake:

The calendar lies. There is no way my youngest is 16. I realize I am old enough to be his grandmother, but that is irrelevant LOL! Eli, we love you to bits and are so thankful you came into our lives (even if we were and are old and tired!).

She also got this great pic of Thumper the 26-toed cat.  As you can see, our cats pay us no mind.  Sigh.

Thumper. Sigh.

And guess what it is doing today.  Again.  Sigh again.

One more time. At least it isn’t sleeting a lot, as was predicted, and the temperature is now down to freezing or just below.

At least it is pretty–the flakes where HUGE!  We were predicted to get a lot of snow, school let out early, and we are all expecting it to be cancelled tomorrow.  Then the weather service predicted less snow, more ice and lots of sleet.  That is actually a lot worse.  But we haven’t had any sleet here in Hope, though beyond the ridge of hills on the coast is may be sleeting.  Here it has been snowing for about 7 hours.  We’ll see what the morning brings.  We will also fill buckets with water as it is likely to be heavy, wet snow and power could well go out.  Again.  Sigh.

And to end of a fun note, this fall I will be helping curate (i.e. be the behind the scenes worker bee) the new SAQA Food exhibit, open to SAQA members.  Alex Veronelli, mover and shaker at Aurifil Thread, will be the juror.  Just today I received the Quilts, Inc., eInsider newsletter, which had this profile of him.  It’s an interesting read.  Enjoy.

Now I need to go start on dinner.  Oh whee.